And it Starts
by CaraM
Summary: songfic based on The Airborne Toxic Event's song Sometime Around Midnight.  I thought it worked pretty well as a basis for Romy angst...hope you do too!


Author's Note: Basically this is a song fic based on The Airborne Toxic Event's _Sometime Around Midnight_. This isn't really an AU fic, but there are a few differences from canon. First: Rogue can touch. How you ask? Doesn't really matter, it isn't pertinent to the story. Second: Rogue and Remy have been separated for a while. I realize that this is probably obvious but just wanted to be clear. Also, I don't address why they split up because I'm too lazy to come up with something. And again, not going to mess with accents much because I can't do themJ…the lazy excuse works for this little detail too.

It's not like he wanted to go out. He didn't, but that wasn't really the point. He was supposed to want to go out and keeping up the reputation he had going was more important than what he wanted in the short term.

So here he was in a bar with a bunch of guys from the Thieves' Guild that had just finished up a job in New York. They wanted to celebrate and he didn't blame them; even he was astonished that they had pulled it off. Didn't change the fact that he was standing under the bar lights, surrounded by spiraling smoke and torrid strangers, wishing for home and sleep.

He stood there drinking his wine and half-heartedly listening to the cacophony around him. He'd probably already had too much to drink and it was only around midnight. He felt alone. Remy enjoyed his friends most of the time but the combination of too much wine and too many dark thoughts was getting to him. He finally decided that he had had enough of this shit for one night. He sat his drink down on the bar and glanced at the doorway. His world stopped.

_And it starts…_

She was walking in the door. Fuck. He fell back against the bar and lost himself. The air went out of the room in that second and he was gone. He couldn't think.  
He watched as she stood in the doorway and studied her surroundings. God, she was here, in the city, in the same room for that matter, and he couldn't fucking breathe. A song came on, something slow and melancholy, something that was ultimately a soundtrack for this moment. As she made her way into the heart of the bar she glanced over and met his eyes. For the first time in what seemed like a lifetime they were staring at one another. Her vivid green into his demon red, matching in intensity. But there was a crucial difference between them. There was no shock in her gaze, just a sad kind of knowledge of the inevitable, like she knew that he would be here and had already prepared for this moment. She had on a white dress, tight in all the right places without cheapening her. Her hair cascaded down her back ending in soft half-curls. She was beautiful.

She walked on, dropping her eyes from his, seemingly dismissing the moment. He watched as she headed towards a group full of men and women already well on their way to drunken bliss. She seemed nervous, like she knew he was watching. She tucked a lock of white behind her ear and took her place next to a man that seemed almost generic in description. He couldn't make him out in the din but he watched as this prick rested his arm lazily on her shoulder. She looked at the man and smiled. He leaned in and whispered to her and she laughed, maybe a little too loudly, at whatever it was he said.

Remy, even through his drunken haze, felt the jealous rage build. He picked up his drink and it's contents rippled as he brought it to his lips. He was shaking. He was fucking shaking, and she was twenty feet away talking and turning and holding her own drink like a cross over her breast.

Remy felt someone touch his arm and jerked away sharply. "What the fuck man"? Emil slurred. Then he looked towards the group that Remy had been watching. "That's Rogue isn't it", he pointed towards her. "Guess God decided he hates your ass tonight huh, mon ami?" , he laughed and actually spit out some of his drink onto the already ruined floor.

"Shut up", Remy spoke in a dangerously low and shaky voice. He stepped away from his group of friends and went to the other side of the bar asking the bartender for another drink. He stood with his back turned to the crowd, drinking and trying to work up the courage to leave before his sanity split in two.

_And you know that she's watching…_

He tried to calm himself. He knew that at some point she would have to look at him and he couldn't look like the mess he was. He breathed slowly, through his nose, in and out… and there it was. Her scent. The smell of lilac and heat, the smell of their sheets every morning that they lived in that small town in California. A man could get drunk on that smell…if he weren't already.

"Hey Remy" she spoke so softly the words were almost lost in the deafening sound of the crowd around them. He turned and looked at her. She was so close. _Did she have to be that close_, he thought in desperation. So close that he could smell her perfume? She was watching him now, looking at him in a way that felt alien to them, to their past. She was looking at him with the impersonal gaze of an acquaintance.

She shifted in her heels and waited politely for him to speak. Remy looked at her lips as they sighed softly waiting for him to speak. He suddenly saw her, his Rogue, lying there naked in his arms. He shook his head to get the image out of his mind before slowly looking up into her eyes. It took every ounce of courage and pride to look into those eyes and pretend that he wasn't dying right there for her. "Hey chere".

She smiled and closed her eyes for a moment. He couldn't do this, she was too raw. Right there in front of him, with the same mannerisms, the same everything…he couldn't stand it.

Tucking the few shorter strands of white hair that framed her face behind her ear she spoke again. "How are you?" she asked him in the voice that haunted him most nights as he drifted towards sleep.

Trying his best to act as calm as she appeared to be he answered, "I'm doing ok."

"I just came out tonight to meet a few friends. It's Tyler's birthday", she pointed to the man that had been whispering to her a few moments before. Remy looked over obligingly and saw that Tyler was watching them with the confident air of someone who's already won. The fucker waved, he actually had the balls to wave at him, like Remy couldn't blow him up in seconds. Remy didn't even acknowledge the gesture, instead turning back to Rogue.

"I'm actually celebratin' myself", he spoke trying to slip into the Gambit persona, that fail-safe against insecure moments like this, hoping she would buy the façade of ease he was trying desperately to wrap himself in.

"Oh. Well, I just wanted to say hi. Guess I gotta be getting back", she shifted again. "Nice to see you Remy" she smiled, a little uncertain he thought…he hoped. She waved as she walked away and he nodded and turned back to the bar before he did something stupid like yell her name or scream that she come back. He gripped the wood of the bar trying to ground himself in the reality of the situation. She was here, in the same bar, and she wasn't with him. She wasn't his.

_And so there's a change in your emotions…_

The next hour was a blur of memories that came rushing like feral waves in his mind. Of them touching; almost-perfect memories of perfect moments that they spent together. Remembering the curl of their bodies entwined after making love, kissing lazily in the aftermath, too exhausted for passion by that point. Her deep-throated, husky laugh at his attempts at charming her back into bed in the mornings. The moments when, for no reason at all she would attack him with accusations of looking at other women and wanting to fuck them. Her screaming until he could placate her with soothing touches and words of utter devotion. The way she would smile when she caught him watching her sometimes. The fury and the loyalty of her love. Rogue loved like it was breathing, completely necessary to her existence and for a time he had been the object of that love. He, Remy LeBeau, was the fucking undeserving object of that love. He kept drinking and the world started spinning.

_And she leaves…_

It seemed like years later when Remy finally worked up the courage to turn around. He looked over the crowd and panicked when he couldn't immediately spot her. _Had she left? Had she really left him here alone?_

He turned towards the door suddenly and saw her. She was staring right at him! He could feel the anger, hurt, and arrogance all wrapped up in that gaze and it staggered him. Rogue was looking directly at him and then in the next second she bolted out the door with the man that had been whispering in her ear…Tyler…that was the fucker's name. Remy's blood began to boil thinking of that asshole touching her, taking off that gorgeous white dress and wrapping himself up in what was rightfully Remy's. His stomach was in ropes and he felt sick from the wine and the rage and the jealousy. She couldn't do this to him. She couldn't leave him again.

"You ok Remy? You look like you've just seen a ghost"? Emil laughed. "Maybe we should get out of here, find someplace with better looking women, eh"? Remy didn't even acknowledge that he heard him. He looked into the mirror behind the bar and threw his glass at it. His reflection shattered.

_And you walk…_

He walked out of the bar, leaving Emil and the others to take care of his mess. He didn't care. He walked under the streetlights, looking for any sign of her, of Rogue. He started to run, too drunk to notice that everyone was staring at him. He screamed her name, running through the streets of New York, praying that she wasn't gone again. His world was falling around him and he didn't care about anything else, just seeing her again, just being close to her and knowing that she was real. He just had to see her…

Remy ran for what felt like forever and finally collapsed under a streetlight. He was down on his knees looking at his hands, drunkenly swaying, and crying. He couldn't help himself. She was right there and he had let her go! He had let her walk out that door before telling her the truth. He wasn't ok, the world wasn't ok…nothing was without her. Kneeling there in the street he knew that was the truth.

"Hey." He looked up and there she was. Rogue was looking at him and holding out her hand. "Come on Cajun. Lets get you out of here." He grabbed her hand and lifted himself off the ground. She looked into his eyes, tears brimming in her own. "I missed you Remy", she whispered.

He was still swaying but he managed to bring his forehead down to hers. He looked at her and smiled. "I missed you to chere."

And what happens to Tyler you may ask? Well, in the words of Rhett Butler who is second in line for my favorite gentlemen southerners, "Frankly my Dear, I don't give a damn." That means that you can't eitherJ

_The Airborne Toxic Event_

_Sometime Around Midnight_

_And it starts  
Sometime around midnight  
Or at least that's when  
You lose yourself  
For a minute or two_

As you stand  
Under the bar lights  
And the band plays some song  
About forgetting yourself for a while  
And the piano's this melancholy soundtrack  
To her smile  
And that white dress she's wearing  
You haven't seen her  
For a while

But you know  
That she's watching  
She's laughing, she's turning  
She's holding her tonic like a crux  
The room suddenly spinning  
She walks up and asks how you are  
So you can smell her perfume  
You can see her lying naked in your arms

And so there's a change  
In your emotions  
And all of these memories come rushing  
Like feral waves to your mind  
Of the curl of your bodies  
Like two perfect circles entwined  
And you feel hopeless, and homeless  
And lost in the haze  
Of the wine

And she leaves  
With someone you don't know  
But she makes sure you saw her  
She looks right at you and bolts  
As she walks out the door  
Your blood boiling  
Your stomach in ropes  
And when your friends say, "What is it?"  
You look like you've seen a ghost

And you walk  
Under the streetlights  
And you're too drunk to notice  
That everyone is staring at you  
And you so care what you look like  
The world is falling  
Around you

You just have to see her  
You just have to see her  
You just have to see her  
You just have to see her  
You just have to see her

And you know that she'll break you  
In two


End file.
